Illimani

This is Illimani, the beautiful 3-peaked extinct volcano, rising to 21,230 feet, that graces La Paz with her presence, along with a diagram of the route we followed. I had decided when I was planning this trip that I wanted to summit one of the Andean mountains of at least 20,000 feet elevation, and chose Illimani because of its proximity to La Paz, and the interesting descriptions I had read from climbers who had been on it. I went with Bolivian Journeys, a guiding company headed by Marco Souria, who has many years of climbing experience, and has helped glaciologists and climate change researchers in their treks in the high Andes. He told me beforehand this would not be an easy climb. I didn’t doubt him.
My guide was to be Eulogio, who has summited Illimani more than 20 times. He spoke very little English, but with my broken Spanish, I was able to communicate effectively. Although Illimani is only about 25-30 miles from La Paz straight-line distance, it took us 4 hours to get there. We had to wind around an incredibly steep canyon behind La Paz, that had to easily have been at least 7000 feet deep. The road descended to the bottom of it, where it was very warm, then ascended the other side, in steep hairpin curves through three small villages. One of the hazards of the trip is below right, herders with their sheep and llamas, sometimes it took them several minutes to get their flocks off the road.

We arrived at the base village around noon, and had to wait for our porters, to help us haul most of our gear up to the low camp. The base village lies at about 13,000 feet on Illimani’s lower slopes, and women from it hire out to all the guiding companies as porters. The first day, these two teenage sisters, Jimena and Clarita, tied the two 60 lb. bags with our food, tents, and climbing gear to a burro, and led it up to our low camp at 14,500 feet, where they are standing by the tent.

It took us about three hours to hike up to the low camp, it was only about 4 miles from the village, and not too steep of a trail. I had just 35 lb. on my back, extra clothing, some food, a down sleeping bag, and water. So I didn’t feel too bad from the altitude. The low camp was in a large open meadow, right at the base of the mountain. It was a cold and gloomy place during our stay, with occasional showers of snow and sleet, and thunder at times. Amazing to me were the herds of horses, sheep, and llamas that people from the village tended in this inhospitable location. My only negative experience in Bolivia occurred that night. Eulogio warned me to bring everything in the tent at night, but I forgot to bring in my very nice collapsible trekking poles. They were gone in the morning. A little eerie to think of strangers wandering around overnight there around my tent in that gloomy place, stealing things.

The next morning started out cold and gloomy, but as we had breakast, began to turn sunny and inviting. We packed up and were ready to hit the trail at 0900. Our porters this day, to lift our supplies to Campo Alto, the high camp at 18,000 feet, were Jimena, who’s about 16, and her older sister Juanita, who is in her early 20s. They tied up the two 60 lb. bags in blankets, wrapped them around their necks, and followed us behind. The trail initially was not very steep, and I thought, great, if it just slowly winds up the mountain, I’ll be in fine shape. Unfortunately, this was not to be. The trail quickly started ascending a sharp knife-like rock outcropping between glaciers. It was like climbing stairs the whole time, on sharp, sometimes loose rocks, with fatal drop-offs on either side of hundreds of feet.

These pictures, above, are about halfway up to Campo Alto, around 16,000 feet. I quickly realized the effect of the altitude, combined with the weight of my pack and steepness of the trail. At home, hiking or skiing with 35 lbs. on does require additional effort, and slows me down some, but at these altitudes, the effect was magnified. We stopped every hundred feet or so, so I could catch my breath, and took very short, slow steps. Of course even Eulogio couldn’t just run up this, so it took us about five hours to ascend from where the trail steepened at 15,000 feet, to Campo Alto, a map distance of probably only about two or three miles. The views were incredible, the thick, steep glaciers on our sides, and the rocky precipitous slope below tumbling down into the canyon, dotted with distant villages and terraced farms. In the far distance, the skyscrapers of La Paz were visible.

We reached Campo Alto around four in the afternoon, and immediately threw down our packs and rested. 18,000 feet, my new altitude record. But unfortunately, I was so winded from our ascent, I just was not able to fully recover my breath. My breathing continued fast, with my heart racing, and within an hour, I began to come down with the symptoms of the dreaded Soroche, altitude sickness. For those who have never experienced it, it is truly miserable. For me, it was a mind-numbing headache that seemed to press out from my skull through my eyes, and a low-grade nausea, not incapacitating, but enough to prevent me from eating anything, though I was able to drink some hot tea and water. The last time I had felt like that was from a bad case of the flu when I was 21, many years before. The plan had been to set up camp, get to sleep early, then rise at 0200 and summit, so we could get back to camp by early afternoon, in case the daily afternoon convection got too bad. I wasn’t going to descend yet, I thought, maybe with some time and rest, I’d improve. Meanwhile our porters came up with their loads. They ascended the rough, steep, rocky route in their dresses, shawls, and sandals with no socks! And it was about 25F up there at 18,000 feet! Talk about tough, I was highly impressed. They were slower, carrying their heavy loads, but were laughing and joking the whole time.

The views from Campo Alto were incredible, like nothing I had ever seen before. It was worth the money spent, effort, and current misery, just to have seen this incredible place. I did eat a few bites for dinner, which stayed down, then enjoyed the sunset and the views.

You can really see the thick layers of snow/ice accumulation that occur every year during the wet season, which is their summer. In this latitude of the tropics, snow levels are usually around 17-18 thousand feet in summer, 14-15 thousand in winter. But winter is the dry season, so not much falls then. But it did look like to me that there was significant recession on the bottom ends of all the glaciers. When I lived in Juneau, from 1998-2001, the Mendenhall glacier there was in fast recession (and still is), and the freshly exposed rocks on Illimani at the lower edge of the glaciers reminded me of that. And, on older pictures of Illimani, you can see the difference. On this picture, from La Paz, in 1997, the glacial tongues extending down in elevation are much wider, and extend significantly lower. As I mentioned before, the Andean countries of Ecuador,
Peru, and Bolivia are very concerned because climate change modeling suggests that all their glaciers could be gone in 40 to 50 years, which they now rely on for water supply and power generation.

The sunset there has to have been the most beautiful I have ever seen. As the daylight lessened, the lights of La Paz became visible in the far distance, and even further, 100 miles away, the perfect cone of Sajama, the highest peak in Bolivia, at 21,500 feet, was in view. The glaciers above camp and the summit of Illimani were bathed in the orange sunset alpenglow.

These crosses, below, just up the slope from Campo Alto, memorialize three Bolivian guides who died over the past ten years. They died because they were guiding tourists like me who came down with Soroche, who then pressed their guides to continue. The tourists either blacked out or slipped, and took the guides with them on their fatal journey. Eulogio said if I didn’t feel better later than night, there would be no climb. I was not going to argue with that! What followed was very likely the most miserable night I can remember. Bundled in my down bag (the temperature out was probably about 15F, with a stiff breeze), with the headache and nausea, sleep was impossible. When Eulogio awoke at 0200 and asked me how I felt, I said no change, and we decided, there was going to be no summit attempt. So, he went back to sleep, and I tried to, but was not very successful. While lying there in misery, it seemed like every 10 to 15 minutes or so, I heard what at first I thought was thunder. There had been some earlier that day, but after awhile, as these sounds continued, I realized, they were avalanches on the higher slopes of the glacier cap. So, perhaps it was for the best we didn’t summit.

Finally when morning light arrived (not soon enough for me!), we slowly roused ourselves, I had some water and tea, but no food, and we packed camp. We began our descent around 0800, this time Eulogio had me rappel down the steep rocky face, just in case I was too tired and slipped. But I was actually feeling fairly well, just knowing we were descending, I think, gave me a boost. It only took about two hours to get down to 15,000 feet, and by then I felt much better. By the time we got to the low camp site at 14,500 feet, I was able to eat. Another couple hours brought us back to the base village, at 13,000 feet, and by then I was ravenously hungry, and ate a full meal of potatoes the villagers gave us, with canned tuna. I passed out all my chocolates and candy to several small children who materialized from the village. Amazing how just the four thousand foot descent was enough to clear my symptoms and return me to normalcy. Since we didn’t summit, we returned to La Paz a day early, and I visited with the Bolivian Servicio Nacionale de Meteorologia y Hydrologica (Bolivian National Meteorological and Hydrologic Service) the next day, after a good night's sleep in my plush 30.00 hotel.

I met with their Meteorologist in Charge, Senor Felix Trujillo. Their office is in a five-floor building shared with an Air Force branch office and their FAA. Although his English was similar to my Spanish, good for the basics, but difficult to maintain in-depth conversations, we still managed to exchange some useful information.

They have a staff of five meteorologists and are only open Monday-Friday, during the day, since they don’t prepare aviation forecasts (I wasn’t able to ascertain who does them for Bolivia). They do have a doppler radar in La Paz, the only one in the country, and issue severe weather warnings based on it. They also issue flood warnings for the whole country, and prepare water supply forecasts, because they have several large dams producing electricity. I was slowly able to demonstrate our graphical forecast editing procedures, using NWS web-sites. They still write their forecasts manually like we in the NWS used to do before the introduction of the graphical forecasting editing process. Their data displays are very nice and large, very much like our AWIPS system, with panes for satellite, radar, and forecast model images. Since none of the universities in Bolivia have a meteorology program, Sr. Trujillo received his degree in Argentina, and others on their staff from Brazil. A few of their meteorologists have even been to NCEP (National Center For Environmental Prediction), in Washington D.C., for training. The lead forecaster on duty ran through the current weather picture with me, their satellite, radar, and forecast model displays were just as good as any we have in our NWS offices. Sr. Trujillo asked me about climate change issues in Alaska, and I mentioned our melting permafrost and the shrinking summer Arctic Ocean ice. He said their main concern is glacial recession on the high peaks. Bolivia and Peru rely on these for much of their drinking water, and power generation. Modeling suggests that in 40-50 years most, if not all, the glaciers will be gone in these countries. It did look like there was significant shrinkage of glaciers on Illimani, as you can see above, and from what I saw, and of course, the demise of their ski area serves as a stark example. Even though we were handicapped by the language barriers, I felt we had a productive visit, and when my Spanish improves, and I return for another one, I look forward to even better communication.